All the TAD amendment (#2) would do is keep the law exactly the way it was before the one-man-lawsuit in Atlanta turned everything upside down.

For 20 years, school boards have had the right to opt in to a TAD if the local voters chose to give them that right. The original TAD constitutional amendment was passed statewide by a huge margin 20 years ago.

All Amendment 2 does is let the people make the choice (and not the courts) to let local voters have the choice to do it – again, with local voters approval – and does not let that choice be taken away from them by the courts and a one-man lawsuit.

IndyInjun, can you explain how you see Amendment 1 as a tax shift, please? I see it as a win-win – lower taxes and win for the environment. So, please expound on your opinion or statement.

Clint, I am against almost every TAD. PERIOD. TAD’s are really about “redistribution of wealth.” I have to say, I wasn’t so passionately anti-TAD until I moved to Atlanta and saw the reality of TADs. I love the idea of Atlantic Station, but when you have a concern about the safety of yourself or your belongings, it’s not a good investment.

Is #3 a sweetheart deal for developers? Are they asking for the state to pay for infrastructure development? Like, connecting to the water system? The developers currently have to pay for this right? And pay for the roads that go out there?

Are they now asking for the taxpayers to pay that for them? I’m not understanding the purpose of #3.

In the 1980’s, a statewide constitutional amendment passed allowing the creation of Tax Allocation Districts (which means the Supreme Court this year used one part of the Constitution to overrule another part of the Constitution – don’t ask me how they did it, that’s why they are lawyers).

The voters approved the statewide constitutional amendment by a huge margin. So the voters spoke, and everyone knew it would involve city, county, and school boards.

Then, pursuant to the constitutional amendment, every single local government that has used a TAD had to get approval from the voters of that area in a referendum.

Then, every TAD had to be specifically voted up or down by all the affected layers of government.

That’s about as voter-determined and locally-controlled as any thing allowed by the Constitution of Georgia.

Yet, because one gadfly lawyer in Atlanta gets his lawsuit upheld in the Georgia Supreme Court, all those layers of voter and elected official approval don’t mean squat.

And worse, good guys like Jim Wooten start pretending that TAD’s have JUST NOW involved the use of future, uncollected school tax revenues – when they have involved this all along, for over two decades.

All Amendment 2 does is re-establish what the voters approved statewide – and on a local basis – dozens of times since the 1980’s.

I’m pro-TAD and voting for the second amendment. It’s not redistribution of wealth, because it’s allowing for the creation of wealth that wasn’t ever there (without the redevelopment). Clint Austin, keep spreading the good word.

Everyone in politics knows I have lobbied for TAD’s, and everyone knows I get paid to do work in politics. By the way – if you really looked at the disclosure, you will see there is very little “big money” behind the effort. It’s mostly a grassroots operation.

“Is #3 a sweetheart deal for developers? Are they asking for the state to pay for infrastructure development? Like, connecting to the water system? The developers currently have to pay for this right? And pay for the roads that go out there?

Are they now asking for the taxpayers to pay that for them? I’m not understanding the purpose of #3.”

Let’s say a developer has a large tract of land located in a county (or city), and it’s big enough that it would require a lot of infrastructure ($$$’s) to develop, and will take many years to build out.

Under this amendment, the developer can now go to his county commission (brother-in-law?) and say “You know what Bubba, I think if you give me one of them Infrastructure Development Districts, I can build us a real nice subdivision, you won’t have to worry your pretty little planning department about it at all, and I’ll give you a real nice tax base”

So the commission grants the developer an IDD, who then issues bonds to cover streets, water, sewer, golf course, aquatics facility, all with a suitable profit margin to reward the developer for his efforts, of course.

Then, when the houses don’t sell as well as you would have thought McMansions would in a new swim/golf community in Hahira, the developer skips to vegas with his secretary, the county gets stuck with a bunch of bonds, and the five residents dumb enough to buy into this subdivision have HOA dues from hell.